


I Can See It In Your Eyes (deep inside you want to cry)

by AngeNoir



Series: Write-Away Giveaway 2 Fills [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyborgs, Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Injury Recovery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 14:26:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1747841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The unit wakes up.</p><p>The - <em>he</em> wakes up.</p><p>He wakes up, and he has a name.</p><p>He wakes up, and the world has changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can See It In Your Eyes (deep inside you want to cry)

**Author's Note:**

> okay this was a lot harder to write than I wanted it to be, mostly because this was _supposed_ to be light-hearted with a touch of angst, in that Bucky and Tony were great friends (until Steve messed it up) and Bucky couldn't understand why people treated Tony differently even if he was part metal.
> 
> It kinda spiraled out of control and set up the plot for a (hoped-for, if I ever actually get the time) sequel.
> 
> for thatsweetmysteroflife's prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _I was wondering if I could ask for another dip into the Unit Tango-Zero-November-Yankee universe? (I know, I'm predictable.) I loved the potentiality of the world you created in it, and anything from, I don't know, an exploration of what the team are up to in the future to Tony leading the movement for hardware that doesn't inhibit cyborg self-awareness and consciousness to anything at all would be amazing!_

_> >Unit needs assistance…_

_Your new target is this man._

_> >Unit is down._

_Mission report._

_> >Assistance required…_

_Stand down, WN!_

_> >Need…_

_> >…assistance…_

_> >…please?_

_> >Power source failing. Unable to continue mission. Abort. Abort!_

_> >…link initiated._

_…interface with the neural mesh and I can – hey, hi there!_

_> >Unit… needs assistance?_

_I know. We’re working on you. Anything you want to let me know? Specs for your arm? Something like that?_

_> >Unit… assistance?_

_We’re getting you some assistance, yes. We’re right here for you. In fact, we’ve got some people who would be very happy to have you back._

_> >This unit… does not comprehend…_

_Give us some time. We’ll take care of you, buddy._

***

“Awake now, yeah?”

Bright light assaulted his eyes, burned at the back of his head, and he heard a groan that he vaguely realized came from his own throat.

“There we go. You’re gonna make a lot of people happy. Or, well, two people, but really. Isn’t two enough?”

“I…” he trailed off, the word foreign and heavy on his tongue. It felt… strange, to use, to comprehend. _I_. There was a person, and it was _him_ , and it was thinking and feeling and processing. “What – happened?”

“ _You_ , my friend, are what happens when someone unethically installs a neural mesh on a fully – or mostly – organic human being. It doesn’t quite take, leaving the being confused and erratic and increasingly unstable. You’re lucky SHIELD only captured you and not ended your existence, really. It was entirely within their power to do so. Your handlers had abandoned you once you failed your mission.”

The words kick-started something in him, something deep that had him jerking and eyes flying open even when he had to squint them in pain from the lights. “Mission,” he repeated, and his voice was thin, confused. “Target acquired. Resistance met. Mission abort.”

A head, haloed in that blinding light, appeared in his line of vision. “Stand down, James,” and the voice wasn’t one he was used to hearing, young but authoritative, and he felt his muscles unclench.

Quite without his permission, he said uncertainly, “James?”

“Yeah,” the voice sighed, and then gentle fingers rested against his organic shoulder. “Your name is James.”

***

“You okay, James?”

He – James, he had a name, it was just… difficult to think in those terms right now – nodded, but didn’t look up. After a few moments of silence, there was the soft footsteps of his closest companion right now, and then the person – unit – person sat down next to him on the bed and stared at the floor in mimicry of his position.

Involuntarily, he felt his mouth twitch into a smile.

“I really don’t see what’s interesting about this position,” the person said finally.

“You are – a unit, like this unit – like my – like I was?” he asked instead of rising to the person’s words.

The person hummed, and he could feel the person’s fingers tapping against the edge of the bed. “You could say that. Kinda. Sorta. I’m not really human, not like you, but I’m not like other units, either.”

He thought back to the blank faces that responded to nothing except direct orders, and then thought about this person’s fluid movements and boundless energy. “You are made of metal, as this unit – as I am.”

“You’re not _all_ the way made of metal, big guy. Just an arm. That’s not legally a cyborg under any law, even Russian. No, that was an illegal neural mesh, hastily patched onto your brain. It’s also why you needed assistance and maintenance so much; neural meshes don’t work on beings that are so organic. There needs to be enough electronics and metal bits in the body to anchor the override commands within the mesh.” The person stood up and moved over to the table in the center of the room. “C’mon. Get over here, let’s get that arm looked at. Your physical therapist will be here soon.”

Red hair and grey-green eyes flashed in his memory. “A woman,” he murmured.

The person looked up and nodded. “That’s right. C’mon, hop over here.”

He hesitated a moment, looking at the distance between him and the person, and said slowly, “I do not think hopping is the best way to cross this distance.”

The person smiled, bright and fierce and blinding, and he felt an unfamiliar sensation curl in his abdomen, even as the person nodded. “Turn of phrase, but yeah, you’re right, why don’t you walk over here then?”

Not sure what he was feeling, he stood up and made his way to the table to have his arm inspected again.

***

“You are getting better about shaking the neural mesh they tried to interface with you.”

He smiled tiredly. It had been quite a while in this sterile room, with no one but doctors in impersonal white to interact with for the most part. His only constant visitors were the director, who never spoke to him, his physical therapist, who spoke but only of small things, and his mechanic, who chattered on and on about everything under the sun. His physical therapist – Natasha – told him that his memories would begin to return, that because of the neural mesh his brain was still trying to heal from the damage it had inflicted on him. He knew that the mesh was only ever intended on cyborgs, and cyborgs were defined as mechanical creatures that had no more than twenty-five percent of their body made up of organics, or had an electronic brain. He knew that his mechanic was called a cyborg because Natasha told him so, but none of that explained the past, how he’d got here, what was going on. For all that the cyborg – Tony – would talk, he always talked around subjects instead of coming at them directly. But at least Tony would try to hint at the answers to James’ questions; everyone else refused outright to answer him. “I don’t feel like I’m getting better,” he said softly.

“Hmm,” Natasha hummed, throwing him a towel. “You’re speaking in pronouns without hesitation. You have thoughts, feelings, and you express them. You disagree when you want – we think, though you’re fairly accommodating to Tony’s chatter, so maybe that’s not completely true—”

“You treat him differently.”

Natasha paused with her towel and hands behind her neck, wiping the sweat from their workout off of her skin. “Tony?”

“Yes. You… he is subordinate to you?”

She seemed to mull that over. “In a way, I suppose. Would you clarify your words?”

James tried to put into words what he noticed. “You only address him when you want a response from him – about me, about a project he’s doing, ordering him to show you something, to be quiet. You often don’t even look at him when he’s in the same room. You sometimes respond to him when he asks questions, or comments, but sometimes you do not – yet whenever you address him, you expect an answer immediately, or you repeat your question or demand until he responds. You do not treat the doctors similarly. Well, not entirely similarly. You also don’t speak to them unless you can help it, but you wait for their responses to your questions, and you always keep an eye on them when they’re in the room. And when the director is present, you are always aware of his position, make idle talk, converse.” He fell silent as she winced, and looked upset. Since that was not his intention, he offered, “You are not the only one to do so. I have noticed everyone treats him in the same way.”

Heaving a sigh, Natasha sat down on the floor next to him, legs crossed, tank top sticking a little to her still-sweaty skin. “The doctors want you to remember on your own. Telling you about what we know – which is precious little, in context – will not help you repair the holes the mesh burned in your mind. But in this world there are humans, and there are cyborgs.”

“Cyborgs are metal beings, and humans are organic beings.”

Natasha seesawed her hand a little. “Yes and no. Cyborgs are not classified as beings. Most people see them as glorified computers that can walk and talk. Cyborgs rarely have any capability to adapt to the situation on the ground. They make good shock troops, but they’re not learning machines, not really. There are too many contingencies and iterations in reality to program into circuits, so cyborgs are… other. Not human.”

James squinted at her. “But they were human, once.”

Natasha nodded. “You are correct. Cyborgs are only possible when enough of the organic material of a human has been replaced, and then a neural mesh established at the base of the neck.”

Stifling the urge to reach up to the puckered hole and scars at the base of his neck, James inclined his head.

“Cyborgs are normally prisoners, specifically death row prisoners who can opt out of the death sentence for this. Not many prisoners have opted for it, but enough have. Other cyborgs are often coma victims. Instead of the family pulling the plug and killing the body once and for all, they can turn the body over to the cyborg program in return for a very handsome payout. Cyborgs are not common, but they are more reliable than soldiers and they quite often do not need as much food, sleep, or training as humans do. Program them, and you have a sentry that can stay up all night, or a foot soldier who will walk forward no matter the amount of resistance presented. They’re not easy to destroy, either, because there is enough technology to rebuild the bodies unless less than fifty percent of the body is recovered, or if the body had been beheaded.” Natasha sighed and looked at the door. “Tony… is different.”

“Tony is human,” James agreed.

Letting out a soft huff of air, Natasha bowed her head. “Legally, Tony is _not_ human.”

James paused and let that statement filter in with the rest of the information he had. “Tony does not have a neural mesh.”

“He does,” Natasha corrected gently. “Pepper – his handler – assures me it’s there, it’s functional. It has base commands loaded into it. How it does not override his human reasoning…” She shrugged. “No one knows. He is the only one of his kind. The only unit made. He is also the first cyborg ever made, so since we cannot study his programming in depth without harming him, and we don’t want to study his programming in depth, we can only look at the surface structure and guess. The neural mesh is a bit dated, and certainly not as refined as current standards, so… we assume that he was a first attempt.” She paused, and then murmured, “Perhaps even a failed attempt. Who knows?”

James considered her words carefully, tried to build up his reasoning from what he knew and what little he could remember about those first weeks when the neural mesh had been removed from his nervous system.

He thought about the one cyborg besides Tony that he’d seen (though he would never guess Tony was a cyborg, had never guessed, and even with Natasha confirming the presence of the neural mesh, he just couldn’t believe it). The cyborg had been an average male, hair a bit spiky perhaps, arms corded with lean muscle, eyes blank, unable to respond to anything except direct commands.

And yet.

And yet he remembered, vaguely, what it felt like to get orders that he could not countermand. He would catch glimpses in his nightmares of when his body was not under his own control. And looking into the eyes of that other unit, he could see an echo of horror in the back of that blank receptacle.

He didn’t know enough of the world to say anything, though. He wasn’t whole himself yet, and perhaps would never be. In the months to come, when he went back with Natasha (his _lover_ , how could he have forgotten his _lover_ , how could they _do_ that to him) and found Steve (how the hell? – super serum) and a team of misfits, he was always careful to try and not fall into the habits the rest of the team had regarding Tony. He was pretty sure he was succeeding, too – at least, in the beginning, Tony had liked him, though Steve had somehow messed things up with Tony so that one of his closest friends was only just starting to rebuild their friendship.

He always held it in the back of his mind, though. When he went with Steve to get orders and saw a cyborg on the helicarrier deck, when he saw a cyborg on the television, when he watched Tony and thought about what he had been told—

Someone was stripping humans of their will and very personhood, and if they had managed to do it to an almost-entirely organic human being… how long before that kind of technology fell into bad uses?

And who was to say it wasn’t already being misused horribly?

Something he wanted to bring up with Tony, once they’d gotten back onto good footing with one another.

(Thanks a lot, Steve.)


End file.
